Advertise On EU-Digest

8/27/17

Andrew Brunson, the American pastor who has been imprisoned in Turkey for nearly a year on dubious terrorism charges, is now facing new charges:
“gathering state secrets for espionage, attempting to overthrow the
Turkish parliament and government, and to change the constitutional
order.”

Brunson and his family had lived in the Turkish city of Izmir for 23
years, where he was the pastor of a small Presbyterian church. He was
arrested, initially without charges, amid the crackdown on Turkey’s
political opposition following last summer’s failed coup attempt.

He was
eventually charged with membership in what the Turkish government calls the Fethullahist Terror Organization—the followers
of the exiled cleric Fethullah Gulen, whom President Recep Tayyip
Erdogan’s government blames for the coup. (Gulen and his followers deny
playing a role. The true story is uncertain and extremely complicated.) Brunson was also accused of giving a sermon to Kurds with “a special purpose”
at his church, implying that he is a Kurdish nationalist sympathizer as
well as a Gulenist. There’s not a lot of overlap between those groups,
other than the fact that Erdogan’s government is hostile to both.

There’s little to no evidence that the Christian minister is a member
of an Islamic social movement, much less proof that he plotted to
overthrow the Turkish government.

As I wrote in May,
there’s been speculation that the Turkish government is using Brunson’s
case to put pressure on the U.S. government, which it wants to
extradite Gulen himself. The imam has asylum in the U.S. and lives in
Saylorsburg, Pennsylvania.There also has been speculation that Turkey
might release Brunson to the U.S. in exchange for Reza Zarrab, a Turkish-Iranian businessman the feds arrested in Miami in 2016 for evading sanctions against Iran.

President Trump, who has praised
Erdogan’s counterterrorism efforts and actions to consolidate power,
raised Brunson’s case during a meeting with the Turkish president at the
White House in May. And a State Department report released by Secretary
Rex Tillerson this month rapped Turkey
for its treatment of religious minorities.

Brunson is being represented
by the American Center for Law and Justice, a conservative Christian
legal advocacy group led by attorney Jay Sekulow, who is also part of
Trump’s personal legal team.

So far, there doesn’t seem to be any movement toward an agreement to free Brunson, and the latest charges don’t bode well.